Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan on the death of David Bowie: “I’ve never sobbed so much”
Since 1980, Depeche Mode has blended the synths and early sensibilities of rap, grunge, EDM, pop, rock, alternative and many more. A lot of hits that sit in their repertoire have become cornerstones of modern culture, including ‘Personal Jesus’, ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’, ‘Everything Counts’, and ‘I Feel You’. The assembly is led by the joint efforts of Dave Gahan and Martin Gore, both of whom have spoken candidly about the endless list of esteemed artists that have inspired them throughout the decades. For Gahan, in particular, the music draws numerous elements from rock star David Bowie, who got under his skin from an early age.
“I grew up listening to Bowie,” Gahan once said, “He’s probably the one artist that I’ve continually listened to from when I was 12 years old”. Gahan notes that Bowie had this ability to make him feel less of an “odd person”.
Detailing further, he added: “I related so much to everything that he was, musically and his identity, too”.
Musical interests aside, Gahan and Bowie actually ended up becoming acquainted after their daughters attended the same school. “[When] I lived in New York,” he says, “My daughter ended up going to a school that his daughter went to. So we ended up being dads that would see each other in the hall, ‘Hey, what’s up, David?’ ‘Alright, David, yeah’.”
Gahan would later get to know Bowie in a different way, however, in the year leading up to his death. His daughter had pulled out of school, which Gahan thought was strange, but then he saw him in person and told his wife he thought something was off. “I remember saying to my wife, ‘I don’t think Bowie’s very well’. I saw something in his eyes, and I knew him, I know that look,” he admits.
When Bowie passed, Gahan, along with many others, were heartbroken at the news. “I’ve never sobbed so much,” Gahan admits, adding: “I felt like a big part of me had been pulled out”. In fact, Bowie was the reason Depeche Mode ever came to be; Gahan and Gore both together with a mutual interest in Bowie’s work, grounded in their shared acknowledgement of their ‘oddness’.
“It’s always been and always will be Bowie,” Gahan said in his Piano Room session earlier this year. “His music transformed something for me and gave me the ability to believe that I could imagine something else and create something else and find some kind of way to navigate my way through life and through music and his music always does that for me.”
Gahan often discusses the way his relationship blossomed with Gore immediately after establishing their obvious common ground. Gahan recalls the sweetest thing Gore ever said to him, which was, “I’m so happy the universe somehow came together at some point and the universe pushed us together so we’ve got to do this”.
